If you are open to getting a refurb, you can save money online. I purchased my Dual 2.0 G5 last month from the online Apple store and saved about $500 over a brand new one. No problems to report.

Sometimes the retails stores have open box deals.

Are you purchasing a monitor to go along with it? You might feel more comfortable being able to check out a monitor for deal/stuck pixels first before walking out the door with it. Not all stores have the same rules here, so depending on which store it is, they may or may not allow you to inspect the monitor first. If they would not let me see the monitor before I purchased it, that would be a deal killer to me.

Do you have a Microcenter near you? Great Apple dealer IMHO, with decent return and replacment policies.

If you have an independent Apple reseller in your area you might want to check them out, I work for an independent reseller and these mom & pop shops usually go the extra distance to make your purchase worthwhile. They will often have 10+ years experience with Macs so they can point to products that they see as good, and they usually know a lot about tech problems and many stores will troubleshoot over the phone so you don't get the usual canned responses from Apple's service center(I'm not bashing Apple's tech line they are great but they have to follow company protocols)

When I bought my last PB (400 Mhz Pismo), I looked at the apple store, but I wasn't getting any BTO options, and it ended up being cheaper to pay full price, but no sales tax by buying from an online reseller (outpost.com, I think). They had free shipping, and a free case bundled with it. If you're not doing BTO and you can stand to wait, it is worth looking around at online resellers to see what sort of package deals they are offering (but I don't know if you can use your Apple loan, then...)

If you aren't going with EDU, Apple Resellers can give crazy price discounts. www.redtaggers.com has the 2.5Ghz powermacs for $2914 and a few powerbooks well over $100 less than Apple's prices. New and sealed, but cheaper than ordering direct. Weird.

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